Wazzup guys!? Its been a pretty crazy and busy week for me. I have joined 2 contests this week and even though I said to myself that I would skip this week's #pixelartweekly, I couldn't quite keep that promise as I have yet again made a submission! After seeing everyone's awesome work for this week, I had the sudden urge to just join again and see if I can stand to the challenge that is making a Cave/Mining themed pixel art!
This week's entry to 
My Entry
I didn't have to think a lot when doing this project, aside from the fact that I would need to modify the scene to a cave so that it would match the current theme required for the contest and thinking a yet simple but interactive animation for it. The idea for the animation came as well from the movie where Frodo went into this cave. I really liked the transition where it seems like the camera was panning to the right revealing what was inside. On this hand though I used it to reveal little Smeagol hiding in the dark looking at the person peeping. The idea was pretty creepy at first but after I had it done and animated, it looked quite nice. Hahaha
The Process
(Gif of the Layers)
I first started with the color pallete that I would use, I quickly took a screenshot from the scene where Gollum was fishing and used it as a base for my color pallete. Starting first with the dark base.
I then added layers of depthness to make it seem like it was really a cave. Slightly changing the color to a lighter shade and forming the stalactites and stalagmites that are always present on the caves. The base color from earlier acts as the part of the cave that is darker because no lights is shining on it.
I repeated the second step but this time doing it on a more lighter shade and adding a bit of details.
Doing these backgrounds isn't as hard as you think it is, because a cave doesn't have a specific shape and form, I just randomly brushed my pencil tool everywhere on the canvas.
On this layer, I added a much darker shade of stalactites, this creates the effect that this part is closer than you. It somehow makes it look like 3D. I noticed this when browsing a lot of cave photos as inspiration for this project.
Here is the part where I added Smeagol on my artwork, this one took a lot of time because I couldn't quite get it at the right angle.
I added a stream of light to make the subject pop because everything looks lifeless if it stays dark.
A few details to the rocks where Smeagol was standing is added to make it look like the rays of light is reflecting on the rocks.
I knew at first that I wouldn't need to cover the whole thing with backgrounds because I needed to add layers in front of it that would act as the entrance to the cave. Here is the part where I added a layer that would hide whats underneath so that when I animate it in the end, it would look like the viewer is peeking inside.
And the final layer where I just covered everything up! Merged all of the layers from the background leaving the last 2 layers in front, ending up with only 3 layers and proceeded with the animation.
The animation wasn't that hard to do, I just nodged each layer a few times, nodging the front most layer to the right by 1 click every one frame, the 2nd layer to left by 1 click as well and the last layer where our subject and the background was in by 3 layers to the left. Did this for like 30 layers then I reversed the process so that it has that parallax effect of peeking then returning then peeking again endlessly.
So thats it!!! I hope you liked my entry for this week!
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